I do not think higher fees would substantially hinder the growth of the community or its network effect as long as those fees stay between 1 and 5 USD, in the distant future when we have a better internet and a better tor network and a better bitcoin network (with stable fees) then by all means go wild.
I think the most exciting aspect of bitcoin is that everyone without permission can be a central bank and start to create money, and let others to use their money. However that's not an easy task since this is a highly competitive market. But still if you lose the possibility to get bitcoin through mining, then bitcoin will lose its most fundamental advantage against fiat money
Sorry for mixing this up.
Quantus thinks this, Johnyj thinks that, I think something else, and we all have in common that is completely irrelevant what we think.
Yes, allowing everybody to print money without permission WAS one of the most fascinated thing of bitcoin; but I was equal fascinated that Bitcoin is anonymous (pseudonymous), decentral and that you can send splits of a cent in seconds round the world and many more things. There is not that ONE aspect of bitcoin that needs to be preserved on cost of other aspects. There are so many aspects and so many usecases, and instead of saying "Bitcoin is made for this" we should watch with amazement what people are using bitcoin for.
You think higher fees wouldn't hinder bitcoins growth. I could present you a dozen of counter-arguments why fees between 1-5 Dollars would hinder bitcoin's growth immesively and would make bitcoin at this moment useless as a store of value. But in fact I don't know it and maybe those fee would work.
But I know such fees would cut out some usecases I'd love to see emerge (for example, searchtrade*). So in my view cutting usecases should be more like a last resort than an option.
Edit: *if micropayment will work as private and secure with lightning, I'm completely ok with it.
Great post, I think we would both agree Bitcoin is both inspiring in its endless possibilities and also very poorly understood by its users. I agree that high fees are not ideal and that if fees should hit even 1$ in value it would be a huge blow to many use cases but its not as if we are playing chicken with a brick wall. When we hit the 1MB limit and we will (The community will not accept a fork till we do and then find out what happens) fees will not shoot up dramatically overnight. We might have a selloff, perhaps as much as 20% but after the fear passes people will see very little has changed.
I personally look forward to the day we hit the 1mb limit, we can learn so much from it. And if the results are bad we will have plenty of time to take action. And one day many years form now when transaction volume is much higher, 10k times higher then today we can again have lower fees, larger blocks and micro transactions. Until then block size should be determined on the basis of whats best for the network we currently have and not the network we want or will have at some unknowable time in the future.